Opposing WEBA Parties File Motion to Delay Prehearing Conference

Absence of Timely Amended Application by SDG&E, Other Utilities at Issue

The Disability Rights Activists have joined with the California Public Utilities Commission's Division of Ratepayer Advocates (CPUC DRA) and Consumer Safety and Protection Division (CPUC CSPD), and The Utility Reform Network (TURN) by moving jointly that the prehearing conference set for August 10, 2010 be postponed until at least 30 days after San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDG&E) and other investor owned utilities (IOU) submit their amended uninsured wildfire billing application to CPUC.

The above parties in opposition state that there is no reason to have a prehearing conference without a proposed settlement that addresses the need for the amended application, as ordered to be filed back in December 2009 by Administrative Law Judge Maribeth Bushey and Commissioner Timothy Simon. The December 21, 2009 ruling stated that “[t]he issues raised in the protests are substantial and require that the application be amended before setting the procedural schedule.” Parties to the Prehearing Delay Motion also stated that “the December 21 ruling further gave substantive guidance to the utilities about the considerations that should be included in an amended application.2 No such amended application has been filed, however, and thus Joint Intervenors are not in a position to comment on the substantive issues in the proceeding, as ALJ Bushey’s July 16, 2010 ruling [for setting prehearing date] requires, without knowing how and to what extent the joint utilities have responded to the guidance offered in the December 21 ruling or the issues raised by the intervenors during the confidential meet and confer sessions held in early 2010. Even if an amended application were filed before August 10, Joint Intervenors would not have sufficient time to digest and analyze that amended application in order to comment on it substantively at the scheduled prehearing conference.”

Among the many issues brought up by parties intervening in the initial Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) authority application A0908020 by SDG&E and others, CPUC DRA pointed out that it would be an unlimited consumer liability for wildfire legal and other costs which were not insurable by the IOUs, and that there was no test to preclude the inclusion of uninsured wildfire costs attributable to utility negligence. The utilities have so far failed to respond to the December 2009 order for an amended appplication addressing those and other issues.